Jim Morrison: Encyclopedia II - Jim Morrison - Biography

Jim Morrison - Biography

Jim Morrison - Early years

Morrison was the son of Admiral George Stephen Morrison and his wife Clara Clark Morrison, who met in Hawaii in 1942 where Ensign Steve Morrison was stationed.

In 1943, a pregnant Clara Morrison moved to Florida to live with her in-laws while her husband served in the Navy during World War II.

According to Morrison, one of the most important events of his life came about in 1947 during a family trip in New Mexico. He described the event as follows:

The first time I discovered death... me and my mother and father, and my grandmother and grandfather, were driving through the desert at dawn. A truckload of Indians had either hit another car or something- there were Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death. I was just a kid, so I had to stay in the car while my father and grandfather went to check it out. I didn't see nothing — all I saw was funny red paint and people lying around, but I knew something was happening, because I could dig the vibrations of the people around me, and all of a sudden I realized that they didn't know what was happening any more than I did. That was the first time I tasted fear... and I do think, at that moment, the souls of those dead Indians — maybe one or two of them — were just running around, freaking out, and just landed in my soul, and I was like a sponge, ready to sit there and absorb it.

Morrison would later revisit this event in the bridge to the song "Peace Frog": "Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding / Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile egg–shell mind."

Morrison graduated from George Washington High School in Alexandria, Virginia in June 1961. The Admiral and family were transferred to Southern California in August 1961. Jim was sent to live with his paternal Grandmother Carolyn and Grandfather Paul Morrison, in Clearwater, Florida where he attended classes at St. Petersburg Junior College. Jim later transferred to Florida State University (1962-1963, where for a time he was a roommate of George Greer), and appeared in a school recruitment film [1]. In January 1964, Jim headed for Southern California.

Jim Morrison - With The Doors

In 1965, after graduating from film school at UCLA, Morrison led a Bohemian lifestyle in nearby Venice Beach. Due to a regime of little food and lots of LSD, by 1966 the formerly pudgy Morrison had trimmed down to the chiseled rock-god immortalised in the famed series of black-and-white photographs taken that year, including his iconic, bare-chested "Christ" pose, a shot that was featured on the Best of the Doors LP cover (pictured right).

A chance encounter at Venice Beach with fellow UCLA film student Ray Manzarek, during which Morrison wowed Manzarek with a reading of his lyrics for "Moonlight Drive", led to the formation of The Doors, and they were soon joined by drummer John Densmore. Guitarist Robby Krieger auditioned at the drummer's recommendation, and was immediately added to the lineup.

The name The Doors came from an Aldous Huxley book, The Doors of Perception, in turn borrowed from a line of poetry by William Blake: "If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite". A door can be seen as a transition between two worlds; you don't know what's going on in the other world until you cross that transition. As Morrison put it, "There are things known and things unknown, and in between are the doors."

The Doors broke through in the spring of 1967 after signing to the Elektra Records label. A smash hit was scored with their debut LP. The single "Light My Fire," written by Krieger, hit number one in June 1967. Three months later, The Doors appeared on the "Ed Sullivan Show," a popular Sunday night variety series that had once introduced a young, wriggling Elvis Presley to the American audience, and later, the Beatles to the United States.

By the release of their second album, Strange Days, The Doors had became one of the most popular rock bands in the United States. Their blend of blues, jazz and rock had never before been heard. The Doors eclectic repertoire included a swag of stunning original songs and distinctive cover versions, such as the memorable rendition of "Alabama Song," from Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera. The four also broke new ground in rock music with their extended concept works, including the famous epic songs, "The End" and "When The Music's Over," and the 30-minute suite, "The Celebration of the Lizard."

The Doors sound was a significant innovation, dominated by Morrison's deep, sonorous baritone voice, against the interplay of Ray Manzarek's keyboards, Krieger's flamenco and classically influenced guitar style and Densmore's crisp, fluid drumming. The Doors were unique because they didn't have a bass guitar in the lineup. Manzarek provided bass lines on his newly-released Fender keyboard bass, a small bass-scale version of the famous Fender electric piano. Although the group did augment their studio recordings with bass players (including Lonnie Mack), The Doors appeared as a four-piece in concert, apart from occasions when they were joined by special guests such as John Sebastian.

Lyrically, The Doors also broke new ground in rock music, with Morrison's complex, surrealist, allusive lyrics exploring themes of sex, mysticism, drugs, murder, madness and death. Although Morrison is known as the lyricist, this is in fact a misnomer, and Morrison himself was always at pains to point out the significant contributions made by Robby Krieger, who wrote or co-wrote some of the group's biggest hits, including "Light My Fire" and "Touch Me."

Among Morrison's more famous nicknames are "Mr. Mojo Risin' ", an anagram of his name, which he eventually used as a refrain in his final single, "LA Woman", and "The Lizard King" from a line in his famed epic poem Celebration of the Lizard, part of which appeared on the Doors' 1968 album Waiting for the Sun and which was finally captured in full on the Absolutely Live double LP in 1969; it was subsequently adapted into a musical in the 1990s.

Morrison famously lived by another quote—this one from poet William Blake—"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom"; Even before he formed The Doors, he took copious amounts of LSD in the band's early years, but switched to alcohol, which he began to drink in herculean proportions, and he reportedly indulged in various bacchanalia, sometimes showing up for recording sessions while inebriated (he can be heard hiccuping on the song "Five To One").

By the late 1960s, the pressure of pop stardom was taking its toll on Morrison and the formerly svelte, five-eleven singer began to balloon out due to his rapidly escalating drinking. Although the cover of the 1969 Absolutely Live LP depicts a trim, clean-shaven, leather-trousered Morrison on the front, this photo had in fact been taken about two years earlier. By the time of the tour on which the live album was recorded, Morrison was considerably overweight (175 pounds, twenty pounds more than normal). He could no longer fit into the legendary leather pants, and his face was obviously bloated (which he tried to disguise by growing a full, bushy beard).

His behaviour became increasingly erratic, as recounted by Danny Sugerman in the book No-one Here Gets Out Alive, and the group's recordings also began to suffer, with numerous sessions aborted during 1968-69 due to Morrison's inabililty to perform. Morrison's instablilty at the time is believed to be the main reason why the group were unable to record a full studio version of "The Celebration of the Lizard" (planned for inclusion on the Waiting For the Sun LP), and in the event they were only able to successfully record one segment, "Not to Touch The Earth".

During a 1969 concert at The Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, an intoxicated Morrison was charged and ultimately convicted of indecent exposure and open profanity.

In 1970 Morrison underwent a Wiccan handfasting ceremony, which writer Patricia Kennealy insists was a wedding of some sort, but he did not take the ceremony seriously, a fact verified in an interview with Kennealy in the book Rock Wives. She also wrote an autobiography about her life with Jim, a relationship which did not endure since he had several other women in his life, including his long time partner of five years, Pamela Courson and Nico from Velvet Underground. Judy Huddleston also recalls her relationship with Morrison in her biography, as does Janet Erwin, who tells her story in an article ("Your Ballroom Days Are Over, Baby").

That year the group began to change direction with the Morrison Hotel / Hard Rock Cafe LP. It featured much grittier, blues-based sound and saw the group returning to their blues and R&B roots. By this time they had all but exhausted the cache of songs that Morrison had written in the early days of the group, and which had provided most of the material on their first three LPs.

In 1970, after a lengthy break, the group reconvened to record what proved to be their last LP with Morrison, L.A. Woman. It solidified the group's return to its musical roots and featured songs that would quickly become among their most popular, including the title track, the pounding "Texas Radio and the Big Beat" and the album's epic closer "Riders on the Storm" which instantly became an FM radio staple.

The L.A. Woman album also signalled another major change in the group's recording career. Shortly after sessions began, producer Paul A. Rothchild -- who had overseen all their previous recordings -- walked off the project, disenchanted with the band's new material, which he dismissed as "lounge music". Long-serving engineer Bruce Botnick took over and produced an album which many fans consider their best after their 1967 debut. It also displayed a growing maturity in Morrison's singing; amusingly, many of Jim's vocals were performed in the toilets at the Doors' offices, due to the excellent reverberation there.

Jim Morrison - Death

Image:Doors3.jpg Morrison moved to Paris in March 1971 with the intention of concentrating on his writing and quitting drinking.

He died soon thereafter on 3 July 1971, in his bathtub at the age of 27; many fans and biographers have speculated that the cause of death was a drug overdose, but the official report listed "heart failure" as the cause of death, although there was apparently no autopsy performed.

In his book Wonderland Avenue, former Doors associate Danny Sugerman recounts that he briefly met with Pamela Courson when she returned to America in the mid-1970s. According to his account, Courson told him that Morrison had indeed died of a heroin overdose, and that she had administered it to him, since Morrison was reputedly afraid of needles and would not inject himself. Courson herself died of an overdose not long after her meeting with Sugerman.

According to another urban myth, documented in a French-made TV documentary in the late 1990s, Morrison supposedly died from a drug overdose in a Paris nightclub, and his body was then removed by persons unknown and returned to his apartment to avoid trouble with the police.

Morrison is buried in the famous Père Lachaise cemetery in eastern Paris, his fans are generally perceived as a nuisance, leaving litter, graffiti, and cannabis behind, to the point where a new burial site has been suggested. At present the tomb is surrounded by a fence and the original grave was changed due to the large amount of graffiti not only on Morrison's grave, but on the graves nearby. (WGS84: N48°51´33.8´´ E02°23´37.2´´)

Some people believe Morrison is still alive to this day living in seclusion with his wife, Pamela Courson, although no evidence exists to support that, especially since Pamela died three years after Morrison's death of a heroin overdose on April 25, 1974 in her Hollywood apartment according to an autopsy conducted by the Los Angeles Coroner's Office. It is also rumored that the only person to see Morrison's dead body was Courson herself; when The Doors' manager arrived in Paris after being notified of Morrison's passing, Morrison's body was already in a sealed casket. Exacerbating rumors of Morrison faking his own death is that he is quoted as saying to his fellow band members that he wanted to fake his own death, and that he would come back and contact them under the alias "Mr. Mojo Risin", which is an anagram of "Jim Morrison", and which Morrison had already referred to himself as on the title of L.A. Woman.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Biography", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki